1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the use of ferroelectric, pyroelectric and piezoelectric crystals for energy transduction via high-energy emissions (HEE). The HEE can be created by simply heating the material or by application of external coercive electromagnetic and acoustic fields. The present invention is directed to the use of such crystals to generate spatially localized high energy (up to and exceeding 100 keV) electron and ion beams, which may be used in a wide variety of applications including, for example, nuclear fusion, electron/ion emission, therapeutic X-ray/electron devices, elemental analysis systems, localization of emission, local scanning chemical analysis, high energy scanning microscopy, point source compact transmission electron microscopy, compact electron-ion beam sources, positron sources, micro-thrusters for ion engines, electrostatic fusors of the Farnsworth type, but with higher conversion efficiency, compact continuous and pulsed neutron generators.
2. Description of Related Art
The publications and other reference materials referred to herein to describe the background of the invention and to provide additional details regarding its practice are hereby incorporated by reference. For convenience, the reference materials are numerically referenced and identified in the appended bibliography.
Ferroelectric crystals have been studied in the past (1). Relatively recently, it was discovered that ferroelectric crystals are able to provide energy transduction by an unusual process referred to as high-energy ferroelectric emission (In the literature this is referred to as FEE, but here we will refer to this effect as HEE because the present inventions are not limited to ferroelectric materials. Instead, the present inventions apply also to pyroelectric and piezoelectric materials.) (2). Ferroelectric crystals, like other pyroelectric crystals, exhibit spontaneous polarization, which is a function of temperature. Heating or cooling a ferroelectric crystal in a vacuum causes bound charge to accumulate on the crystal faces that are normal to the polarization. A modest change in temperature can lead to a large electrostatic field. For example, heating a lithium tantalite crystal from 240 K to 265 K decreases its spontaneous polarization by 0.0037 C/m2. (2a). In the absence of spurious discharges, introducing this magnitude of surface charge density gives a potential of 100 kV in energy emissions.
Attempts to harness the above energy potential have focused on electron acceleration and the accompanying bremsstrahlung radiation (2b-2d and 5). Less focus has been placed on using ferroelectric crystals to produce and accelerate ions that may be used for a variety of purposes including fusion. (2e-2g). Furthermore our recent finding indicates that fields in excess of 120 KV can be achieved.